C-SPAN video library in spotlight

Best of Google TV Series

What did Fed Chairman Bernanke say about monetary policy to the congress on Capitol Hill? What did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say about US Foreign Policy priorities? Using Google TV, you get to watch them up close and personal in C-SPAN Video Library featured on Google TV Spotlight.

If you are a history buff, American History TV channel intrigues you with videos of Historians Perspective of President Kennedy, Presidential Descendants, or 20th Anniversary of Persian Gulf War.

If you are a bookworm, you may want to dive into Book TV and watch authors Jessica Hughes to talk about her book Revolt, Brigitte Gabriel to talk about her book They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, or Stephanie Coontz to talk about her book A Strange Stirring.

If you are a political junkie, you may want to jump straight into Washington Politics, start your morning with Morning Hour, move onto House Session and Senate Session, track White House daily briefing, and watch all-you-can-eat pundits.

There is more. In fact thanks to C-SPAN Video Library, there are over 160,000 hours of digital archives for your viewing pleasure, all available in Spotlight on the grand stage of Google TV.

Shawn Shen, Developer Relations, Google TV

Amazon Prime members now get free instant streaming

Best of Google TV Series

I’ve been an Amazon Prime member for a while now and love the free two day shipping, especially when I’m keen to get my hands on the latest Google TV device as soon as possible.

Now there’s even more reason for Google TV users to love this service. Amazon currently has over 90,000 movies and TV shows that you can stream instantly on your Google TV device for a few dollars. Well, they have just announced that Amazon Prime members will also get unlimited, commercial-free access to more than 5,000 of those movies and TV shows, for no additional cost. Titles include “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Syriana,” “March of the Penguins,” and—my personal favorite—”Doctor Who.”

This will work immediately on all Google TV devices, so give it a whirl if you’re an Amazon Prime member. If you don’t already own a Google TV device, then here’s another reason to make the most of that Amazon Prime membership.

Posted by Peter Sherman, Google TV Marketing

Grammys recap

Best of Google TV

If you missed the Grammys last weekend, you can still catch the memorable moments on Google TV.

If what you’re after is the red carpet fashion and interviews, head over to The Grammys YouTube page. Watch the highlights on YouTube leanback including Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine in haute couture and Mumford and Sons in stylish cravats. There you’ll also find acceptance speeches by The Arcade Fire, Lady Antebellum and Lady Gaga.

VEVO has curated a playlist of videos featuring the top 2011 Grammy Winners. Check out first time Grammy winners like Ryan Bingham and La Roux, as well multi-time winners like Buddy Guy & B.B. King. Check out these videos as well as recaps from past Grammys on VEVO’s spotlight site.

The full list of nominees and winners is available on the Grammys website where you can also watch the pre-telecast ceremony in its entirety.

Posted by Charlie Harding, Google TV Marketing

Al Jazeera on Google TV

Best of Google TV Series

Over the past two weeks, Al Jazeera has carried 24/7 breaking news coverage of the protests in Egypt. Live video of the protests from Tahrir Square, streaming from AlJazeera.net and English.AlJazeera.net, have driven a 2500% traffic increase to their website. The majority of this traffic has come from the United States, as U.S. viewers can’t access Al Jazeera’s broadcast on television.

This week, Al Jazeera released their Al Jazeera spotlight site where you can watch breaking news clips, scan headline news and dive into the breadth of their web content -- all on the big screen.

For the latest coverage on the protests in Egypt you can also visit Al Jazeera’s YouTube channels in both Arabic and English for premium coverage and CitizenTube for on-the-ground citizen reports.

- Posted by Daniels Lee, Developer Relations

News from any source

Best of Google TV Series

Television is stil the main source for the daily news in the home, according to PEW research. Until lately, print and web news content have been absent from the big screen. We’ve been working with developers to enhance your TV news experience, optimizing both traditional and innovative news sources for Google TV.

• The New York Times offers daily TimesCast video-news updates alongside video blogs and featurettes.
• USA Today has improved reading for the big screen: you can browse through the day in photos, stay up-to-date on sports news, and track the world of business.
• The CNBC News App lets you watch the latest web videos in business news. Follow the markets as they happen and track your personal, customized stock portfolio.
• The Huffington Post brings together the best of traditional news, the blogosphere and opinion reporting in their sleek News Glide web-app.
• The Onion covers “the important stories lesser outlets fail to report” through their comedic style.

Video journalism has also proliferated across YouTube. On YouTube Leanback, viewers have access to rich content from channels like the Associated Press, Al-Jazeera English, and NPR. Alongside traditional news sources, YouTube has built a thriving community of citizen reporters. The News & Politics channel, CitizenTube, aggregates video news from across the YouTube community, providing raw footage from the scene of breaking news and unique perspectives from people and places around the world.

On Google TV you can get breaking news from many sources: cable broadcast, the web, blogs, and even citizen journalists.

Posted by Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager, recently watched Google TV Entry - Stop Motion Animation

New Years Resolutions

Best of Google TV Series

As New Year’s Eve approaches, many of us will draw up lists of resolutions. This year, as you’re setting out to learn a new skill or get in shape, the best place to start is right in your living room.

One of the top New Year’s resolutions is to pick up a musical instrument. But let’s be honest, it’s discouraging when bumbling around with a guitar pick does not make you an instant Hendrix. Instead of struggling on your own, or struggling to find the right teacher, try taking lessons from home on Google TV. Berklee School of Music offers great intermediate and advanced lessons for guitar, bass, keyboards, and voice on their YouTube Channel. For guitarists, RockOnGoodPeople has lessons for all levels in all genres of music. They post new licks, scales, and chords all the time to help you unleash your inner Clapton, Page, or Swift. Hey—no judgment.

If music isn’t your language, there are foreign language lessons all over the web. You don’t need expensive software to learn a new language when there are great resources on Google TV. For the basics like greetings, directions and the all-important food-related vocab, tune into SpanishDict. If you’re looking for long form classroom instruction you can rent half hour lessons from RockN’Learn, with songs and entertaining learning for kids and adults. To advance your learning TheSpanishBlog uploads new lessons on pronunciation every week.

After too many rich Holiday meals, it can be great to balance indulgence with some exercise. If you’re making a commitment to trim down or get fit, but don’t have (or want anything to do with) a gym membership, Google TV can be your personal trainer.

A good place to start is ExerciseTV, where you can get workout regiments and nutrition tips. For rigorous exercise try NerdFitness’s YouTube channel where you can learn new workout circuits and even focus on muscle groups like arms and legs. If you’re looking to build strength, flexibility, and just the right amount of Zen, TaraStiles Yoga channel has detailed instructions for both easy and, well, ambitious Yoga poses (hint: prepare for the blood to rush to your head).

With all these great resources available right from your sofa, it shouldn’t be hard to try a little yoga, pick up the guitar, or practice your Spanish just a little bit each day. This is the year to keep those resolutions, with a little help from Google TV.

Posted by Charlie Harding, Marketing Team

Interactive TV for kids (and no we're not talking about channel surfing)

Best Of Google TV Series

We all love the holidays, but it’s always a challenge to entertain the kids, especially when the excitement of gift giving has died down. A popular way to keep them occupied is in front of the TV, but this often leads to endless channel surfing, the occasional cry of “I’m bored,” and a high likelihood that your kid will end up watching “whatever’s on.”

While we can’t guarantee that your kid will choose to watch the most educational content every time (we’re partial to YouTube EDU), we are sure you’ll find that Google TV helps in many ways.

The least that Google TV can do is to end the era of mindless channel surfing. Using Google’s search functionality, your kid (or my nephews) can find the show or movie they are looking for immediately, whether it’s on TV or the web. A search for “Santa” just brought up 24 movies and 30 episodes on TV and services such as Amazon Video On Demand or Netflix. Once my nephews are through with those, we can get started on all the great Santa-related web videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and the rest

If your kids want truly interactive TV (who can blame them?), then Google TV can really help out. There are great websites optimized for the TV suited for the kits in our Spotlight Gallery. Some of the most kid friendly sites are:

• MeeGenius: Read your kids beautifully illustrated books (a huge array of classics and more modern tales). You can customize some of the content to make it more personal and the app will then read the story out loud, with the relevant words highlighted on screen for you kids to follow along.
• Fraboom: There is so much going on at Fraboom (from educational videos to games) that they are right to describe it as a museum. Look out for the battle against Baron Von Boredom.
• PBSKids: A really simple interface means that kids can navigate around their favorite videos of PBS KIDS shows like Curious George and Dinosaur Train.
• Cartoon Network: Quickly and easily find all your favorite shows from Cartoon Network.

Posted by Peter Sherman, Marketing Team

How to get your family on Google TV

Best of Google TV series

As the holidays get into full swing, I am spending more and more time with my extended family, getting in to all kinds of fun. Like any self-respecting embarrassing dad, I love capturing these precious moments by making tons of great little videos and taking even more photos. I no longer need any fancy equipment to do this – most smart-phones now take great photos and videos (I love my Nexus S, if you're interested.)

The best part is that we can all slump on the sofa and re-live the best moments on my TV whenever we want, because it's powered by Google TV. In the not-so-distant past, your family would only get on TV if they were (un)lucky enough to get onto a TV show. More recently, you would have to find the right lead, plug your high-end camera into your TV and navigate though impossible menus and settings.

Now, you don't need any fancy equipment to do this, either. My preference is to do a little editing, then save the best photos and videos to a Picasa Web Album, which I can do straight from my phone. Using the Gallery app on my TV, which syncs to Picasa, I immediately have a slide-show on a 46" photo-frame right in the living room. We've had a lot of fun using Picnik to add silly effects to our photos.

I tend to upload the very best videos to YouTube, so that the world can share my family insanity. Watching these in Leanback mode on TV makes it feel like we've almost got our own TV channel – it's even in HD, which is pretty incredible for something recorded on a phone.

The most important point is that you don't need to use the same services I do. Because Google TV has a full web browser, it can access any website you want to use. For example Flickr looks great on the big screen and Vimeo Couch Mode is optimized for viewing on Google TV.

When I say you can get your family on TV, I mean all of them, wherever they are in the world. If you have the Logitech TV Cam, you can video chat with friends and family on the big screen (no more huddling around a tiny laptop screen).

Posted by Ambarish Kenghe (AK), Product Management Team

Rocking Out for the Holidays

Best of Google TV series

It’s the first week of December -- time to get ready for the holidays! What better way to get into the spirit than to listen to holiday music? And why listen to it on your computer or your iPod when you can listen to it from your TV, which is likely connected to the best speakers in your house? Here are the Google TV team’s top music recommendations for Google TV:

1. Pandora* - pick a song or artist you like, and Pandora will magically create an endless playlist of similar music for you.
2. VEVO** - a TV-optimized set of back-to-back HD music videos featuring your favorite artists.
3. Napster* - grab a subscription and get unlimited music.
4. Grooveshark - millions of streaming songs online.
5. Last.fm - stream music and keep a record of what you listen to from any player.

In the Spotlight
Want even more? Here are some new websites that have been optimized for Google TV. If you have a device, you can try them out in the Spotlight folder linked from your home screen.

1. Crackle.com - free uncut movies & TV shows.
2. Fraboom.com - online children’s museum - it’s like a live classroom in your living room.
3. KQED.com - Public Media serving Northern California featuring news, food, arts, and science.
4. mSpot.com video - mSpot Movies brings the newest on-demand movies to your TV.
5. PartyCentral - a fun game where you can socialize with guests, earn popularity, and customize your house to host the hottest party.

Check them out and let us know what you think! And if you're a Google TV owner, please add a comment below, Facebook us, or tweet at us with your own favorite things to do. Who knows - we just might feature it in an upcoming post!

* Available in the Applications folder linked from your Google TV home screen.
** Available in the Spotlight folder linked from your Google TV home screen.

Thanksgiving made easy with Google TV

Best Of Google TV Series

It’s that time of the year again - the time when your kitchen and house are buzzing with family, friends and food. The holidays are of course all about spending time with loved ones, but for many, it’s also a great time to experiment with new recipes. This year Google TV has made discovering new recipes and ideas for fun decorations much easier.

This past weekend, a few friends and I were watching "Boy Meets Grill" on the Food Network on my Google TV powered TV and Bobby Flay was showing how to make a delicious modern day turkey. It got us to thinking about our own thanksgiving menus, so we put the TV into Dual View mode (which lets you browse the web while you watch TV in the smaller window) and we scooted on over to FoodNetwork.com to browse other recipes. There are more than 1,400 Turkey recipes on Food Network's site alone, and we now had access to them al on the big screen to browse together. The possibilities for how to prepare this staple main course are endless and we found recipes that suited each of our tastes - from Black Pepper-Pomegranate Molasses Glazed Turkey to Deep Fried Turkey.

Next we hit Epicurious.com where we found categories of recipes for more Thanksgiving staples like stuffing, veggies and pies - with a truly beautiful imagery of each recipe so we could see what the finished dish would look like.

We didn’t stop there. We then navigated over to Chow’s optimized site for Google TV where we were met with a slew of educational videos to help prep us for our feasts. We learned how to truss a chicken or turkey, how to roll pie dough with a wine bottle and how to make a quick and easy holiday centerpiece. 

Before we knew it, our holiday menus and decorations were planned - from the comfort of my living room - and we could get back to watching TV. For the cooks out there, Google TV is a great way to help you plan your next celebration! Happy Thanksgiving.

Posted by Gina Weakley, PR Team